


Metanoia

by fatalchild



Category: Supernatural
Genre: End!verse, M/M, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 00:20:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatalchild/pseuds/fatalchild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 2014. The survivors at Camp Chitaqua have prepared to make their stand against Lucifer, but something goes terribly wrong.  Castiel wakes in a mess of carnage with no memory.  He wanders out into a garden where he meets a beautiful angel dressed in white who assures him that sometimes it's better to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metanoia

The air was stagnant, thick with the coppery tang of blood and heavy with the wet musk of rot. Death clung to everything, and a palpable silence hung overhead, disturbed by the sudden, sharp crack of bone in the distance. Castiel didn’t hear it, couldn’t have heard it from where he was lying near unconscious, smeared in gore and filth. Even if he had, it would have meant nothing to him. He didn’t know that man’s name anymore. He didn’t know the names of the people whose bodies littered the floor around him. He didn’t know his own name. Castiel knew pain, and he knew fear, so when he woke, he pushed himself upright and began to drag himself towards the only speck of light his eyes could find.

The sky flashed with lightning, but there was no rain. The air had a strange, otherworldly chill to it that seemed to speak to something deep inside Castiel’s core. The atmosphere itself was trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t remember enough to understand. He stumbled forward, eventually crumpling to his hands and knees as he pressed onwards, desperate to get away from the carnage behind him. His arms trembled and gave out, dropping him face first into dirt and dead leaves. He heard footsteps and then a voice that was so painfully familiar yet impossible to place. 

“Oh. Hello, brother.” 

Castiel tried to lift his head. He saw a flash of white and felt a sudden wash of cold before all of his senses fell into a dark oblivion.  


The first thing Castiel noticed when he awoke was that he was no longer lying in filth. The second was that he no longer felt any pain. He scrambled to his feet and looked around the unfamiliar surroundings in confusion. The room was small, containing little more than the cot heaped with blankets upon which Castiel had found himself moments earlier. The air was chilled, and he could hear a storm in the distance, the combined effect giving the enclosed darkness a somehow ominous feeling. Castiel felt a sudden, inexplicable panic, and he fled the small confines in search of some sense of familiarity, unsure as to whether he should run towards or away from whatever it was he could feel tugging at him deep within. 

Castiel wandered through the small garden, eyes moving over twisted roses and cracked statues until they caught on a figure cloaked head to toe in immaculate white. He held a single red rose in his hand, which he dropped unceremoniously onto a heap of fresh dirt before turning around. He smiled, and Castiel knew, deep down, that he had once known this man. There was something about those eyes and that smile that he was certain was familiar to him, but his mind struggled with the memories, failing to piece together the dual identity before him, and he floundered in silence. 

“I’m pleased to see you’re awake.” 

An irrational fear washed over him, and Castiel found his mouth suddenly uncomfortably dry. He said nothing. 

“You don’t need to be frightened, Castiel. I saved you. I wouldn’t hurt you.” 

“Castiel? Is that…? Who are you?” 

“Castiel is your name. You don’t remember?” 

“No.” 

“Hm. Perhaps that is for the best. You’ve endured much these past few years, and though I would have preferred to keep you from it, I do admire the tenacity with which you insisted upon choosing your own path.” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“It’s not important now. What’s important is that you’re safe. All is as it should be.” 

“As it should be? There was blood everywhere, and… What happened to those people?” 

“Their own foolish arrogance, I’m afraid. But you don’t need to be concerned. You were never really one of them. You shouldn’t have even been here, not like that.” 

Castiel’s mind raced with too many questions to voice, and he just stood there, staring in hopeless confusion until he found one pertinent thing to ask. “Who are you…?” 

“I’m an angel. My name is Lucifer.” 

The name should have triggered something, but it didn’t. Castiel should have felt a rush of old fear or a hint of fresh purpose, but the only sensation he could make sense of was aching emptiness. He neither believed nor disbelieved that Lucifer was an angel. The facts, as he understood them, were very few. Castiel knew that many people had died that day but that he had survived. He knew that he had been injured and tired and yet had woken up without so much of a scratch on him. He knew that logic demanded he accepted someone, or something, had intervened on his behalf, and as Lucifer was the only other living thing he’d encountered, his story made as much sense as anything else. He forced himself to meet Lucifer’s eyes, a deep, otherworldly green that sent Castiel’s mind reeling with a desperate attempt to remember. 

“Thank you,” he murmured. 

“You’re welcome. Come now, there’s no reason to be upset. I’ve been waiting for your return for a long, long time.” Lucifer smiled as he crossed to Castiel’s side and reached for his hand. “Let me take you away from all of this.” 

Castiel decided then that he really didn’t have anywhere else to go.  


The room Lucifer kept Castiel in was comfortable enough. Everything was well-suited to his tastes, from the low-set bed heaped with blankets to the familiar clothing that filled the finely crafted armoire, but still, it somehow felt like a gilded cage. For days, Castiel did little more than sleep, succumbing to mental and emotional fatigue that no amount of grace could heal him of. Occasionally, when he hovered between asleep and awake, he would be vaguely aware of the slight drop in temperature that signaled Lucifer’s arrival. Sometimes, Lucifer would look Castiel over and leave, but more often, he would settle into a nearby chair and pass hours in silent vigil. The few times Castiel dared to look at him during these episodes, he found Lucifer’s face to be wrought with a strange melancholy, as if he were mourning something. He never asked what it was. 

In time, Castiel recovered from the initial shock of what had happened. He slept less often, but the times he was awake were spent mostly sitting in quiet thought, desperately racking his mind in an attempt to piece his memories back together. It made him feel sick and gave him headaches, and he found that his body ached for something he couldn’t understand. The answer came to him in a small bottle of pills that he found in a bloodstained pair of jeans. The words on the label made little sense to him, but a glimmer of recollection renewed the association in his mind between the drugs and a keenly longed-for sense of euphoria. He pressed his hand against the lid, blood surging with a little rush of anticipation when he heard the click of the cap’s lock coming undone. The little, white caplets tumbled out into his palm for a moment before a fierce, icy grip on his wrist sent them scattering across the floor. 

“What are you doing?” Lucifer asked, voice a low, hushed whisper. 

Castiel stared at him blankly, no satisfactory answer coming readily to mind. “I… They are mine, aren’t they?” 

“I don’t understand you, Castiel.” Lucifer blew out an agitated sigh as he slipped the bottle away. “I saved you. I have brought you here, cared for you, and protected you, and yet you insist upon clinging to this miserable existence.” 

“Trapped me, you mean.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“That’s what this is. You mean well, I’m sure, but—“ 

“Castiel, do you have any idea what kind of world exists outside of these walls?” 

“No. I don’t. That’s my entire point. I don’t know anything.” 

Lucifer stared at Castiel hard for several, long moments. “Very well then. Come, and I will show you what you seek.” 

Before Castiel could voice any protest, there was a firm hand on his shoulder and they were gone. 

Lucifer showed Castiel the very pinnacles of human ruin. He showed him abandoned cities with their smoggy skies that blotted out the sun and the stars. He took him to polluted lakes and let him see sick, grey fish floating on top of the murky water. He walked with him through desolated forests, huge expanses of dead, molding wood and scampering, homeless wildlife. Then Lucifer showed Castiel the remains of humanity, the monstrous creatures that had once been people before they were infected by the Croatoan virus. Castiel watched with horror as they bit and ripped and clawed at each other, deprived of all other prey. 

“I want to go back,” he said. “Take me back, angel. I don’t want to see anymore,” and in an instant, he found himself returned to the safety of his room. 

Lucifer watched him with concerned, evaluative eyes. “All these things I have kept you from have been for your benefit, Castiel.” 

Castiel nodded. He sank slowly to the floor, curling in on himself, and hunkered into a small corner, he began to weep. 

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Lucifer felt a pang of guilt.  


They didn’t speak for days afterwards. Lucifer visited only at night, checking in under the cover of darkness to make sure Castiel was safe, that he had what he needed. Castiel spent most of his time in silence and solitude. The few times he happened to be awake when Lucifer came to him, he would simply look up at him through damp, red-rimmed eyes, glazed over from the drugs he had scrambled to salvage from the floor and hidden away. Lucifer knew, and Castiel knew that he knew, but they never spoke on it until the pills ran out and Castiel spent nearly an entire day doubled over in painful withdrawals. He thought he was hallucinating when Lucifer came to him, lifted his chin, and whispered, “I will heal you, but we must not cling to pitiful things, Castiel. Do you understand?” And although Castiel really didn’t, he nodded. He shut his eyes when Lucifer touched his forehead and lost himself in the cleansing wash of grace. 

Castiel was surprised when he woke up, no longer covered in sweat and sickness, and found Lucifer sitting in the chair near his bed. 

“Hello, angel.” 

“Hello, Castiel.” 

“I…” He faltered, dropped his eyes down to the floor. “Are you upset?” 

“About what?” 

“The pills.” 

“I am not angry with you, but it is troubling how often you insist upon learning things the hard way.” 

“I don’t know what you mean.” 

“No. I imagine not.” 

“Well… thank you for helping me.” 

Lucifer turned to look at him. “You still sound unhappy.” 

“I don’t mean to be ungrateful. I just… wonder what I’m doing here.” 

“Some things will become clearer in time, I should think.” 

“Perhaps.” Castiel looked up then and met Lucifer’s eyes. “Would it be too much trouble to ask you for a book?” 

“A book?” 

“Poetry, preferably, but anything would suffice.” 

“Are you fond of poetry, Castiel?” 

“Yes. At least, I think so.” 

“Very well then.” 

From that day, Lucifer brought books with him every time he came to see Castiel. He spent more and more time lingering, watching the way Castiel’s eyes lit up as he poured over the pages. Castiel read quickly; he devoured and dissected the words before him and then waited for Lucifer to supply him with more. He always did, though he occasionally noted that Castiel should pace himself, lest he work his way through all of the worthwhile poetry composed throughout the course of human history. Castiel laughed then and countered that no matter how bleak things got, there would always be people somewhere writing poetry. Lucifer smiled at him and said nothing, but he knew. No, there wouldn’t. 

Castiel’s demeanor changed after that. His mood improved, and the light came back into his eyes. He seemed alive again. He soon took to joining Lucifer in the garden, either following him through the mazes of vines or simply sitting amidst the roses with his books. In time, Castiel found himself less interested in spending these particular hours reading and increasingly fascinated with watching the one who surely had to be his guardian angel. Little else made sense. Castiel listened to Lucifer when he hummed sometimes, softly and under his breath, something that felt familiar to Castiel and yet was decidedly foreign. He watched him then, watched the way he moved with a beautiful, otherworldly grace and yet carried the distinct weight of sadness. He noticed that Lucifer seemed to have a fixation with the roses and the marble statues of elegant, sometimes winged beings. Castiel folded his book shut. 

“Can I ask you something?” 

“Of course.” 

“Why are you here?” 

“Pardon?” 

“I don’t mean offense, but… doesn’t an angel belong in Heaven?” 

“Perhaps I have no taste for Heaven.” 

“Really? But it’s Heaven. Surely it must be better than this.” 

“The Earth was once as finely crafted as Heaven, Castiel, I assure you. In time, it will heal, and it will be beautiful and remarkable once more.” 

“Is that why you’re here? To help fix things?” 

“I suppose that would be as good a reason as any. Why are you here, Castiel?” 

“I don’t have anywhere else.” 

“Then let it suffice.” 

Lucifer’s cryptic answers only served to spur Castiel’s curiosity onwards. He asked more and more questions. Is there a God? Have you seen Him? What is He like? What is Heaven like? Do you ever go there? Are there other angels like you? Do they ever come to Earth? Lucifer answered him honestly and yet with artful avoidance, but the constant questions eventually seemed to alienate him. Castiel found himself standing by his window, waiting for Lucifer’s appearance in the garden far below, longing for their visits, but entire days would pass without the angel showing himself. Castiel began to fear that he had driven him away, and then, even when Lucifer did come to him, it was obvious that something had shifted, changed between them. It seemed a connection that Castiel had just barely begun to feel had been severed. 

It was then that the nightmares started. At first, the images were so fleeting and broken that they made little to no sense to him. Castiel would wake soaked with sweat and painfully, yet inexplicably, terrified. Occasionally, he found himself in the throes of panic so intense that he called out for Lucifer, one of the rare occasions when the name tumbled past his lips. Lucifer always came, almost instantly, with gentle, whispered reassurances. He urged Castiel not to dwell on these episodes, told him that whatever he was seeing was neither real nor important, and implored him to simply let it go, and although Castiel knew it was likely sound advice, he couldn’t quite shake the urge to find out what was lost, buried inside the recesses of his own mind. 

The dreams grew more frequent and intense. They shifted into things strange and abstract. Castiel no longer dreamed of familiar faces and hushed voices but instead of coils of light and scatterings of stars. He felt surges of emotion with no explanation or anchor: love and doubt, anger and abandonment, loneliness and guilt. Castiel felt simultaneously displaced and trapped. He would wake in the middle of the night and pace his room until he worked himself up into a strange fervor, upon which he would pry the large window open and stand upon the sill. He closed his eyes then, letting the cool breeze caress his damp skin. He began to lean forward, toying with the urge to jump, when he became suddenly aware of another presence in the room. 

“Castiel, what are you doing?” 

“Tell me, angel, what is flying like?” 

“I don’t know how to describe it. It’s unlike anything else.” 

“Even falling? I imagine they would be very similar. I cannot fly, but I should think even I could manage falling.” 

“How do you know you could not fly?” 

“I have no wings,” Castiel whispered, voice thick with longing. 

Lucifer laughed then, softly, reaching to brush his fingertips over the contours of Castiel’s back, lightly tracing the delicate wings etched into his flesh with black ink. 

Castiel’s eyelids fluttered, and he found himself holding his breath for a moment. “You have never touched me quite like that before,” he whispered. “Your hands are always a bit cold. Does that have something to do with you being an angel?” 

“Something to do with it, yes,” Lucifer murmured, dropping his hand away. 

Castiel reached back and caught his wrist. “It was an observation, not a complaint.” 

“I do not want to make you uncomfortable.” 

“Then I will tell you if I become so.” 

“Very well. Please come down from there now.” 

“If I jumped right now, would you be able to catch me before I made it down?” 

“Yes.” 

“Do you think it would be at all like flying?” 

“No.” 

“I’ll take your word for it.” Castiel lingered for another moment, staring up at the stars, before he stepped off the ledge and returned to his bed. “Would you do something for me?” he asked, after a moment. 

“Of course.” 

“Would you stay with me tonight?” 

“Of course.” 

Lucifer moved to close the window and pull the curtains before settling into the chair near the bed. He sat there quietly through the night, watching how the moonlight played over Castiel’s skin and the finely crafted wings, listening to how his breath calmed and evened out as his heart rate slowed. He remained there until morning, leaving only after Castiel had padded away to bathe. It became a ritual of sorts between them. Castiel would stand in the window, arms out to stretch painted wings as he imagined flying, and when Lucifer came, he would ask him to stay. He always did, for longer and longer stretches of time, watching Castiel sleep with a hint of curiosity in his expression until one night, Castiel turned over to look at him. 

“Do angels not sleep?” 

“I have no need.” 

“No, but could you, if you wanted to?” 

“Why would I want to?” 

“I don’t know. You might dream of Heaven.” 

“…I might dream of Hell.” 

Castiel sat upright and stared at him through the darkness for a long stretch of silence. “Have you been to Hell?” 

“Yes.” 

Castiel didn’t know what to say then. “I’m sorry” seemed strange and inefficient, as if his apology could somehow make up for the atrocity that was this Heavenly being having descended to Hell itself. He soon decided that there were no words for such a revelation, but the thick, pained sadness in Lucifer’s voice resonated throughout Castiel’s being and reverberated at his core. Castiel could feel the connection between them, the shared experience of having undergone profound suffering that could not be accurately voiced. He wasn’t quite sure for whose benefit it was that he wrapped his arms around Lucifer’s neck and slid forward into his lap, but he didn’t object, as Castiel feared he would. Lucifer glanced up with a curiosity that beguiled his identity, and Castiel felt emboldened enough that he didn’t hesitate before pressing their lips together. 

Castiel wasn’t sure how they came to be on the bed. He recalled neither casting his own clothing aside nor pushing the layers of white away from Lucifer’s body. The night was a blur of lips and hands pressing into warm skin, of sweat-slicked bodies twisted in a mutually comforting embrace. Defiling an angel like this had to be the worst sort of sin, Castiel thought, and he was surely damned, but he didn’t care. This angel, this one, beautiful thing, was his and his alone, one ray of light in all the painful darkness that he couldn’t even remember. Lucifer was his angel, and he claimed him in flesh, drinking in his grace and calling out his name in one breathless gasp at the height of bliss. 

It was strange how the one thing could change so much, but every time he murmured Lucifer’s name into the curve of his neck or dug his fingers into the smooth muscle of his back, he could feel something stirring inside of him. His own grace, withered and broken, was being slowly coaxed forward by the constant proximity to the Archangel, and with it came an onslaught of memories. Castiel began to withdraw into himself, fearful of what was happening to him. He would fall asleep curled in Lucifer’s arms only to wake hours later calling out names he barely knew. Dean. Sam. He remembered battles and death, smears of blood and flashes of white light. The word Apocalypse echoed through his nightmares, and he recalled the circumstances of his own rebellion, the uphill battle they’d had no chance of winning, and the way his angelic self had withered and died from within. And then Castiel remembered Lucifer and the Colt and the battle he had never intended to survive. 

Lucifer found him then, in the dead of night, not standing in the window but rather slumped before a little heap of dirt long overgrown with twisted vines. 

“You killed him…” 

“Yes.” 

“Why?” 

“He came here to kill me out of nothing short of petty vengeance, and he would have sacrificed you for the chance to do it.” 

“That’s because you’re…” 

“I’m _what_ , Castiel? Have I not been good to you? Have I not loved you? I assure you, nothing that has passed between us was a lie. …Not for me.” 

“He was my friend,” Castiel whispered, crumpling down and digging his fingers into the dirt. 

Castiel wept for a week, shut off in his room and inconsolable. He tried to throw himself out the window but found it to be hopelessly jammed shut. He screamed then, cried his pain out at the top of his lungs, cried for Dean and cried for Sam, and sometimes, he even cried for himself, for every bitter loss that he felt more with each passing day. When Lucifer finally came to him, he refused to meet his eyes—Sam’s eyes. 

“I cannot endure this,” Castiel whispered. “Why have you not killed me?” 

“Why would I do that? I never wanted that, Castiel, not once. I love you. I want you to be happy.” 

“ _Happy?_ How can I be? Practically everything I ever loved is gone.” 

Lucifer stared at him quietly, brows drawn in a profoundly agonized expression. 

“I’m sorry…” 

“Did you ever love me at all?” 

Castiel closed his eyes, tears falling down his cheeks. “Yes.” 

“Then let me help you.” 

“How?” 

“Let me take your pain.” 

“You mean my memories.” 

Lucifer nodded. “You will be as you were before. We can be as we were before.” 

Castiel’s hands trembled as they rose to cover his face. “How? How could I ever…?” 

Lucifer reached out and took his wrists gently. “They are in Heaven, little brother. They are at peace. Why should you not be as well?” 

Castiel feigned indecision, but he knew his own heart too well. “I’ve lost everything,” he whispered hoarsely. “…Except you. I can’t… I can’t stand to lose you too.” 

He took a moment to lay a red rose on the small grave before he followed Lucifer back inside. A single touch on his forehead put Castiel into a long, dreamless sleep. His pain ebbed away, vanishing with his memories and so many fragments of his former existence into a sea of oblivion from which they could never return, and when he awoke, Castiel knew nothing of his former suffering, nothing of his former self. He looked up at Lucifer, and though it took Lucifer a moment to meet his eyes, still he smiled. 

“Hello, angel.”

**Author's Note:**

> A fanmix made for the work can be found at [this link](http://8tracks.com/fatalchild/metanoia).


End file.
